This episode is a paragon of the anthology’s tongue-in-cheek dark humor. When that relationship doesn’t work out, she returns to Arthur in an attempt to win him back, but content in his bachelorhood, he kills her and finds a, um, creative way to dispose of her body. “Arthur” (Season 5, Episode 1) Laurence Harvey ( The Manchurian Candidate) stars as the title character, a sadistic chicken farmer who becomes a confirmed bachelor after his gold-digging girlfriend leaves him for another man. Price’s smarmy charm coupled with Hitchcock’s suspense and surprises are a treat to watch and will leave you wondering why this was the only time they worked together. “Master of Menace” Vincent Price stars as an arrogant detective who prides himself on having a perfect record in his career and doesn’t take it too well when a visiting lawyer suggests that the detective made a huge mistake in one of his previous case. “The Perfect Crime” (Season 3, Episode 3). The first 10 minutes of this episode are proof that you don’t always need dialogue to tell a compelling story, and the sequence where the husband is driving on the highway could very well have inspired this scene from Psycho, released three years later in 1960. But there’s a hiccup in his plan when he is stopped by a cop who insists he fix his broken tail light. In the middle of a heated quarrel, a husband (David Wayne) suddenly kills his wife, stuffs her in the car trunk, and drives off to dispose of the body. “One More Mile to Go” (Season 2, Episode 28). By the end of the episode, you may be questioning your own sanity. The premise of this episode almost makes it more suitable for The Twilight Zone, but Hitchcock adds his own sinister touch to Pelham’s predicament.
#ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR DEATH OF A COP SERIES#
Tom Ewell ( The Seven Year Itch) stars as the title character who recounts to his doctor a series of mysterious incidents that have led him to believe he has a double who is purposely impersonating him. Suspense builds as the viewer hears his increasingly fearful thoughts as he tries to think of a way to show that he is alive before it’s too late. He gets in a car accident and wakes up completely paralyzed, and when help arrives, he is presumed dead because he is unable to speak or move a muscle. Joseph Cotten ( The Third Man) plays a cold-hearted businessman who believes that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. Here are five of my favorite episodes, all directed by Hitchcock himself. The entire series is available on DVD, but you can also catch Season 1 on Netflix and you can stream most of the episodes from Seasons 1-4 on Hulu for free. Alfred Hitchcock Presents may not be jump-out-of-your-seat frightening, but showing the awful things ordinary people are capable of makes it truly chilling. Additionally, the influence on Hitchcock’s films and vice-versa is unmistakable. The series was ahead of its time in many ways, namely in its dark subject matter, cinematic style, compelling anti-heroes, and use of violence (usually off-screen) many of the episodes hold up incredibly well today. In an effort to uphold morality in the midst of macabre themes, the show’s sponsors insisted that for stories that ended with a person getting away with the crime, Hitchcock had to close the show by assuring the audience that the criminal was eventually caught.ĭespite the moral pressure, Hitchcock and company still got away with a lot for the 1950s, when television contained primarily wholesome fare like Lassie and I Love Lucy. Each segment was written by James Allardice and were filled with boundary-pushing dark humor. The series is perhaps most famous for Hitchcock’s wry remarks that opened and closed each episode. The series also featured well-known actors like Bette Davis, Vera Miles, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre as well as early screen appearances of future stars like Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, and William Shatner. Of the original 258 episodes, 17 were directed by Hitchcock himself.
The series was rebooted in the mid-1980s and ran for four seasons.
#ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR DEATH OF A COP FULL#
Anthology series were all the rage back in the early days of television, and after more than three decades of directing films, Hitchcock embraced this method of storytelling to tell mystery and thriller stories that were too short to be feature films.Īlfred Hitchcock Presents aired from 1955-1962 in a half-hour format, then was extended to a full hour from 1962-1965 and was renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Before the boundary-pushing American Horror Story and Fargo emerged on the scene to redefine the anthology series, Alfred Hitchcock made his own significant contribution to this television genre.
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